A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S °

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S °

°1 Oh Galuppi,° Baldassaro, this is very sad to find! I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind; But altho' I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind! Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings. What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings, °6 Where St. Mark's° is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings°? Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by ... what you call °8 ... Shylock's bridge° with houses on it, where they kept the carnival: I was never out of England—it's as if I saw it all. 10Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May? Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day, When they make up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say? Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,—[page 123] On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed, O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head? Well, and it was graceful of them: they'd break talk off and afford —She, to bite her mask's black velvet—he, to finger on his sword, °18 While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord°? °19 What? Those lesser thirds° so plaintive, sixths° diminished sigh on sigh, °20 Told them something? Those suspensions,° those solutions°—"Must we die?" °21 Those commiserating sevenths°—"Life might last! we can but try!" "Were you happy?"—"Yes."—"And are you still as happy?"—"Yes. And you?" —"Then, more kisses !"—"Did I stop them, when, a million seemed so few?" Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to![page 124] So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say! "Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay! I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!" Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one, Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone, °30 Death, stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.° But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve, While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve, In you come with your cold music till I creep thro' every nerve. Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned: "Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.[page 125] The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned. "Yours, for instance: you know physics, something of geology, Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree; °39 Butterflies may dread extinction,—you'll not die, it cannot be!° 40"As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop, Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop: What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop? "Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold. Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

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